WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN
WHEN COMPUTERS WERE WOMEN JENNIFER S. LIGHT Jennifer Light's essay 'When Computers Were Women' looks at women's early work in the technology field. In the 1940s, computation and programming were considered low-level jobs, and were mostly assigned to women. Back then, 'computer' was a job title, rather than an object. Even though their contribution was significant, women were overlooked when it came to praising the advances in technology, particularly regarding the ENIAC computer. Women's temporary positions in the technology field were eventually taken over by men returning from war, and their participation was pushed into historical invisibility.
J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, household names in the history of computing, developed America's first electronic computer, ENIAC, to automate ballistics computations during World War II. These two talented engineers dominate the story as it is usually told, but they hardly worked alone. Nearly two hundred young women, both civilian and military, worked on the project as human "computers," performing ballistics computations during the war. Six of them were selected to program a machine that, ironically, would take their name and replace them, a machine whose technical expertise would become vastly more celebrated than their own1 The omission of women from the history of computer science perpetuates misconceptions of women as uninterested or incapable in the field. This article retells the history of ENIAC's "invention" with special focus on the female technicians whom existing computer histories have rendered invisible. In particular, it examines how the job of programmer, perceived in recent years as masculine work,
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